Subjects, Events and Licensing

me'rige tanna ja'gavannu biTTukoTTanu

*John Mary-D self's place-A gave up

“John gave her own place (back) to Mary”

c)*Ja'n Me'riyannu tanna manege karedukonDu ho'danu

*John Mary-A self's home-D took

“John took Mary to her home”

23. a) Mu'rtige tanna makkaLa bagge tumba abhima'na

Murti-D self's kids of toward much pride

“Murti is very proud of his kids”

b) So'manige ta'nu tumba ishta

Soma-D self-N much liking

“Soma is very fond of himself”

c) *Tanage so'manu tumba ishta

*self-D Soma-N much liking

“Soma is very fond of himself”

Note that changing the word order does not change the grammaticality of, for instance, 23b):

24. Ta'nu So'manige tumba ishta

self-N Soma-D much liking

“Soma is very fond of himself.

A.3.2 Coreferential Subject Deletion
In Kannada, sentences may be conjoined by making all finite verbs except the last one participles, and deleting all but one (the first or last) of the subjects, provided that the subjects are identical (25)). If their subjects are not identical, another strategy is employed to conjoin sentences. Both the controlling NP and the deleted NPs must be subjects; if one is not, ungrammaticality results (26)). Dative NPs in dat-nom constructions can be so deleted and can control such deletion (whatever the case of the coreferential NP); nominative object NPs cannot. (27), 28)).
25. Uma angadige ho'gi ¯ taraka'ri tandu ¯ adige ma'DidaLu

Uma shop-to having-gone vegetables having-brought meal made.

“Uma, having gone to the shop and having brought vegetables, cooked the meal.”

26. a) *Ra'manu ¯ karedu Shya'manu hattira bandanu

*Ramu having called Shyam near came

“Ramu having called (him), Shyam came near” (object deleted)

b) *a'ke ku'liyava-nannu karedu ¯ sa'ma'nu iLisidanu

*she porter-acc having called baggage put down (masc)

“She having called the porter, (he) set the baggage down”

(object controlling)
27. a) ¯ henDatiya jna'paka bandu Ra'ma vihvalana'danu

wife's remembrance having come Rama went berserk

“Remembering his wife, Rama went berserk” (deletion of NP-D)

b) ¯ bisilinalli tirugi Sure'shanige ba'ya'rike a'yitu

sun-in having wandered Suresha-D thirst happened

“Having wandered in the sun, Suresha became thirsty”

(NP-D controlling deletion).
28. a)*¯ nannannu cenna'gi ma'tana'Disi nanage avaLu ishTa a'daLu

* I-A nicely having talked to I-D she-N liking became

“She having talked to me nicely, I like her”

(NP-N controlling deletion)
b)*avaLu nannannu cenna'gi ma'tana'Disi nanage ¯ ishtTa a'daLu

She-N I-A nicely having talked to I-D l iking became

“She having talked to me nicely, I like her”

(NP-N being deleted).

6 Concluding Remarks

Let me remind the reader of the questions with which we started in Chapter 1:
a) What are the different “sources” of subject properties—how can each of these properties be syntactically characterized?
b) Why, if these properties have separate provenance, do they exhibit such a strong tendency to converge on one “subject” NP, cross- and intra-linguistically?

In answer to the first question we have explored in depth two of the properties generally taken to characterize “subjects”, resulting in strong and detailed accounts of the notions “agency” and “causation” as they relate to subjects, as well as a serious proposal separating the question of licensing of subjects (the province of the Extended Projection Principle) from any notion of case-assignment or realization. Before summarizing these accounts, however, it behooves me to make a remark or two addressing the second question.

The simple answer, as far as questions of case and theta-roles are concerned, is that the structurally dominant argument at early stages in the derivation remains the structurally dominant argument. Locality restrictions on A-movement, in combination with the requirement that NPs must move to AgrPs for case-checking, will ensure that agent arguments, projected in the specifier of EventP, will move to a higher AgrP than arguments below EventP. If there is no agent argument, the next highest argument will reach the highest AgrP, et cetera. These restrictions account for the tendency, for example, for nominative case to be realized on the most “thematically prominent” NP, while still allowing such a correlation to be only a tendency, subject to disruption from quirky case and other factors, as extensively discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.

More complex is the question of why variation is allowed as to which argument reaches the EPP-satisfying A’ position, Spec-TP1. By hypothesis, constructions like Locative Inversion, where a PP behaves with respect to that-trace effects like a “subject,” involve movement of the PP to that A’ position where NP subjects find themselves. Similarly, if as suggested in Chapter 5, such an A’ position is the one which triggers V2 phenomena, the question remains unanswered as to what parametric variation is necessary to force the highest NP to raise to that position in a “subject-prominent” language like English and yet allow almost any XP with Topic status to move to this same position in a “topic-prominent” language like, e.g., Tagalog. A possible candidate for such a parameter could be in varying the A vs. A’ status of Spec-TP1, and hence varying the restrictions on movement into that position — certainly not a new solution, but not necessarily an easy one to implement either. Such questions, unfortunately, will have to be left to later research.

Let us return to the accounts of external arguments and case which have been the focus of the present investigation. The conclusion of the first half of the thesis is that agent arguments are generated in a separate projection from other arguments, projected by a head which can contribute the notion “CAUSE” to verbal meaning. The decomposition of verbs into two or more projections was initially motivated by syntactic and semantic arguments in other work. First, we reviewed syntactic arguments (from recent accounts of Case Adjacency) which suggested that transitive verbs, at least, are the result of movement of a lower verbal head into a higher one. We then considered an account of the external/internal argument asymmetry proposed by Kratzer (1993), based on an observation of Marantz (1984), which relies crucially on generating external arguments in a projection distinct from that of internal arguments. The nature of the external-argument-projecting head, however, had not been fully addressed. We turned to Japanese lexical causatives to clarify this question. In particular, the fact that a lexical causative could only be formed on an unaccusative verbal root suggested that the causative morpheme was an overt reflex of the upper verbal projection argued for earlier, and that this upper verbal projection defined the boundaries of the “l-syntax”, in Hale and Keyser’s terms; this projection is responsible for delimiting the Event of a given verb and hence is renamed here EventP, whose head makes the semantic contribution of causation (CAUSE) to the eventual incorporated verbal form. Verbs without a “causer” argument, and hence without a specifier of EventP, are headed by an Event head whose semantic contribution to the verb with which it incorporates is represented as BE, or possibly, HAPPEN. Incorporated forms delimited by the EventP have the status of “word-level” items, while iterations of EventP produce “biclausal” syntax, with two events. It is this notion which crucially allows the resurrection of the generative semantics argument for verbal decomposition into “primitive” semantic units. In support of such decomposition, we consider the possible breakdown of double object verbs like “give” into a semantic primitives “CAUSE to HAVE”. Certain languages observably do not have a possessive “HAVE” primitive; such languages should also lack the double object construction, if this construction is composed of primitives in the manner suggested above. The prediction is examined with respect to several languages from distinct language families, and at least preliminarily appears well-founded.

In the second half of the thesis, we move on to questions of case-assignment and licensing of nominal projections, a topic we essentially ignored throughout most of the preceding discussion. Many of the constructions (notably the possessive) examined in previous chapters evince a peculiar case-marking pattern, where the subject is marked with dative case and the object with nominative. These constructions constitute another instance of a “subject” property mismatch, whereby nominative case, usually indicative of subjecthood, appears on an object argument. Tests of these constructions in Icelandic indicate clearly that in every respect these nominative objects behave exactly like accusative objects in standard transitive constructions. With this fact in mind, a mechanism for assigning morphological case is proposed which modifies standard assumptions about the strict connection of morphological case with structural position, crucially appealing to the notion of a “mandatory” and “dependent” case. On this account, nominative is the case which must be assigned if no other structural case is assigned in a clause. A similar conclusion is drawn with respect to dative case in Japanese analytic (not lexical) causative constructions; an extended treatment of these constructions is undertaken.

Finally, given the revised version of the case-assignment mechanism, the question of NP-licensing is re-examined, with an eye to dispensing with abstract case entirely; the apparent effects of abstract case assignment (and, incidentally, Buzio’s Generalization) are seen to be the result of the coincidental interaction of the mechanism governing morphological case assignment with the Extended Projection Principle. The EPP, as conceived here, requires that a slot in clause structure be occupied overtly; in Minimalist terms, a strong feature in some high-up projection (here TP1) requires checking. We then move on to speculation about the provenance of dative-nominative constructions cross-linguistically, and conclude with some remarks about the interaction of the analysis of auxiliary verbs and verbal participles with the proposed system of case-checking and subject licensing.

The conclusions contained herein have wide-ranging implications for both the theory of the lexicon and of NP-licensing. Much of the present research is to be considered work in progress, and it is to be hoped that future results will support the sometimes preliminary analyses presented here. Any thoughts or comments from readers of this work are more than welcome: send to [e-mail], or [e-mail]. Thanks for reading this far!

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1This terminology is used in Li (1976).

2 The key word here is "straightforwardly;" much work has been devoted to exactly this problem. Many have argued that although there is no direct mapping of “agent” arguments to this syntactic position, the additional notion of a thematic hierarchy might allow a characterization of mapping to the preverbal position along the following lines: “the argument receiving the highest theta-role appears in preverbal position”. This type of approach inevitably requires some complications, however. In double-object constructions, either object can become the subject of a passive:

i) Lucy was given the blanket (by Linus)

ii) The blanket was given Lucy (by Linus)s

Some special notion (e.g. stipulating that the theta-roles borne by “the blanket” and “Lucy” are tied in the thematic hierarchy) is needed to allow the appearance of both of these constructions. The attraction of a syntactic approach to the alternation, as we will argue extensively below, is that under such an approach to passive constructions (and indeed to argument structure in general) no additional notions of thematic hierarchy or rules of lexical alternation are necessary. See discussion in chapters 4 and 6 especially.

3In fact, in later chapters we will follow Hale and Keyser (1991) in claiming that apparent theta roles are in fact syntactic in nature, rather than lexical — they can be syntactically defined .

4This example is poor due to the “presentational focus” requirement on subjects in locative inversion constructions; locative inversion is used when the inverted subject is being introduced into the discourse. Pronouns are infelicitous in this context as they must refer to some previously salient element in the discourse. However, insofar as any pronoun is good, there is a definite contrast between the nominative and accusative forms.

5Kitagawa (1986) claims that such examples are felicitous when supported by an additional honorific verb sasiage-ta, ‘respectfully give’; however, for my informants, even such support cannot save the above construction.

6Marantz (p.c.) points out that no one has previously argued that A-movement should be subject to the CSC; without such a demonstration, this argument loses much of its force.

7Williams (1992) proposes an account whereby theta-relations are read off the structure after derivations are complete; on such an approach, this argument is not relevant. There are other arguments against such an approach (see below, and sections 3.1.2-3 in Chapter 3).

8However, see the discussion of selection of subjects by V in section 3.3.2 below.

9Kitagawa argues that English is underlyingly VOS, where Spec-VP is right adjoined. He takes sentences like i) below as examples of unraised subjects, where the CP coindexed with the expletive it is to the right of the rest of the VP material:

i) It_i [_VP bothers me [that he hasn’t arrived yet]_i ] Kitagawa (1986): 239

I will not argue extensively against this analysis here, see, however, the discussion of similar examples with respect to Case theory in Chapter 6 below.

10In a recent article in LI, Takano (1995) reevaluates Huang's analysis and reworks it to include a broader range of data. His conclusion that this type of fact provides support for the ISH remains the same as Huang's, however, and I hence do not elaborate. The interested reader is referred to Takano's article for discussion.

11Marantz (p.c.) points out that Huang’s argument holds not only for VPs but for all predicate types, given his particular view of binding theory; that is, that any predicate on Huang’s account should have a trace of its subject within its maximal projection.

12I would like to thank Andrew Carnie for much crucial discussion and commentary on material in this section. Much of this material is taken directly from Carnie, Pyatt and Harley (1994); I am greatly indebted to my co-authors for their part in the development of these arguments.

13David Pesetsky (p.c.) points out that this prediction is only necessarily true if verb-movement to C is substitution. On an adjunction story, whether C is filled or not should make no difference to verb-movement. The argument from Old Irish, below, however, is not affected by a substitution vs. adjunction approach to V-C movement.

14 McCloskey (1992b) presents a more complicated argument using the behavior of adverbs showing that the verb is no higher than the left edge of IP in Modern Irish. In English, there is a set of adverbs and adverbial clauses which appear to the right of complementizers but to the left of subjects (data from McCloskey 1992b):

i) a. That